The TLDR is: Zuller proposes that social capital and financial capital form a virtuous circle for cryptonetworks, allowing first movers such as ethereum to gain a decisive advantage against competitors. Ethereum's accumulated social and financial capital make it difficult for a challenger to emerge as a general-purpose decentralised smart contract platform.

My thought is Zuller's analysis of social capital ignores the long established body of work on on the topic, and this analysis could be better applied in the case of ethereum. I also think bitcoin is an interesting study in the effects of social capital and the viability of a decentral crypto network.

Does physical capital lead to social capital, or does social capital lead to physical capital? Or is the relationship between the two circular?

There is a large body of work in sociology and critical theory focused on this very question, spanning decades. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu analysed the relationship between social elites and their social capital, and concluded that class status is inextricably intertwined with social capital, allowing elites to leverage their "connections" to obtain disproportionately larger amounts of financial capital.

In other words, well-connected, wealthy individuals are already endowed with large amounts of social capital, which they can then use to continue to obtain more financial capital.

An analysis of ethereum should start with an analysis of the founder's social capital: Vitalik Buterin already occupied a rarefied position in the technology industry because of his Thiel fellowship, obtained as an adolescent.

He then burnished those credentials by starting a publication, Bitcoin Magazine, which did not attract financial capital, but boosted his social capital through increased visibility and connections to the bitcoin world.

Having leveraged his social capital in this way, he now made the leap to monetise it by finding collaborators to launch ethereum.

Individual actors then use their association with the ethereum network to increase their own social capital. This in turn attracts investors of financial capital.

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"What is regarded as important and interesting is what is likely to be recognised by others as important and interesting, and thus to make the man who produces it appear more important and interesting in the eye of others."

There are many different reasons scientists research different subject matters. These intentions are not always known to the public, but the public has a sense of hope that these intentions are in the interest of the people and the research is done to better those who will be affected. The research to find a cure to cancer is a prime example where the people hope this research is done to better the people. The public hopes that scientists will find a cure to save their loved ones. However, this quote bursts this bubble of hope, in a sense. It takes away the innocence of these good intentions and creates doubt in the minds of the public. This quote makes the people wonder if research is being conducted to further the professional reputation of the scientists by being the first one to discover a knew piece of information and create history. People often default to thinking others have the best intentions in mind, but this quote brings a sense of darkness about that innocence. Is research really conducted to benefit the public, or is it done so a scientist can become a piece of history?

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​BUT, our students will not (most) have the economic, cultural, historical provenances nor intention ... the reality of community college students is that most will not produce academic discourse but will eak through multiple courses with minimum academic writing (and if so, poorly) while they will continue their certain continued marginalized communities that are, per Bourdieu, decapitalized (lacking cultural capital)​, whereas critical rhetoric could address these systemics inegalitarianism.